Thursday, January 23, 2014

Anbar Before And After The Awakening Pt. IX: Sheikh Sabah Aziz Of The Albu Mahal

Sheikh Sabah al-Sattam Fahran al-Shurji Aziz is the primary
sheikh of the Albu Mahal tribe located in western Anbar that stretches into
neighboring Syria. After the 2003 invasion the tribe joined the insurgency to
fight the Americans and was actually allied with Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). In
2005 it decided to turn on the Islamists for a number of reasons making it the
second tribe in the province to do so. Its revolt was short lived, however.
Sheikh Aziz’s story not only highlights the change in Anbar from rebellion against
the U.S., to fighting AQI, but also the beginning of a new Sunni sectarian
identity that emerged after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Sheikh Aziz and his Albu Mahal are based in Qaim along the
Syrian border (Wikipedia)

After the removal of the Baathist regime in 2003, Sheikh
Sabah al-Sattam Fahran al-Shurji Aziz and his Albu Mahal tribe joined the
insurgency. He
believed people had the right to oppose the foreign invader, and so he took
up arms against the Americans. Sheikh Aziz believed that the U.S. came into
Anbar and used the wrong people, and humiliated and scared the locals. More
importantly he felt like the tribes were ignored by the occupying power. This
led the Albu Mahal to join
the fight against the Coalition. Anbar was one of the first areas of Iraq
to rise up against the occupation, and the sheikh gave a good explanation for
why that happened. The province was actually overlooked during the invasion and
U.S. forces didn’t enter until afterward. When they did there were a number of
incidents involving demonstrations and firing into crowds that quickly angered
people and created an impetus for people to become insurgents. There were also
those that had a nationalist reaction to the invasion from the start and wanted
to fight the Americans.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawid wal Jihad, which would become
Al Qaeda in Iraq, portrayed itself as defenders of the Iraqis against the
occupation. Aziz said that when AQI came to Anbar it tried to win over the
people. It claimed that it wanted to fight the invaders, and handed out money
to the tribes to gain their loyalty. However in the following years Anbar
turned on the group because it humiliated people, tried to impose their foreign
ideas, and were violent and distrustful of Iraqis. A local police chief from
Qaim who was from the Albu Mahal was assassinated by AQI for example, which
started a blood feud between the two. The Islamists also tried to take over the
tribe’s smuggling business. Many others in Anbar eventually turned on AQI, and
all had the same complaints. Al Qaeda claimed it came to help Iraqis, but it
really wanted to take over. Its heavy handed tactics eventually wore out its
welcome. The sheikh came to believe that Al Qaeda was controlled by Iran, and
was being used by Tehran to destroy Iraq. This was an opinion that became very
popular amongst some Sunnis. Faced with the fall from power after 2003, the
rise of Shiite and Kurdish parties, and the U.S. occupation, many Sunnis were
at a loss to describe the new status quo. Given this new situation many turned
to what they knew which was Iran to explain things claiming that Iran was not
only behind Al Qaeda, but the new ruling parties, and the Americans. Sunnis
came to believe that they were victims of this triumvirate of powers.

In the spring of 2005 the Albu Mahal decided to turn their
guns on Al Qaeda in Qaim. The tribe created the Hamza
Brigade along with the Albu Nimr in Hit. The Brigade had a tough time of
it, because the insurgents outgunned them. Anbar Governor Sheikh Faisal
al-Gaood who was from the Albu Nimr went to the Americans for help, but didn’t
get much. For instance, the U.S. launched Operation Matador in Qaim in May, but
did not include the Hamza Brigade, and actually killed some tribal elements. Nevertheless,
by the summer the Brigade had expelled AQI from Qaim. By the end of August, the
Americans had finally begun
working with the two tribes. That didn’t stop the Islamists from fighting
their way back into Qaim, and almost destroying the Brigade by September.
The Albu Mahla and Albu Nimr were only the second group in Anbar that tried to
fight Al Qaeda. The Americans at the time were still not sure of how to work
with the tribes, and many were more concerned with protecting their own forces
than making allies with Iraqis, especially ones like Aziz’s that had once been
insurgents. The Coalition eventually did start working with the Brigade, but
not enough to allow them to stand up to AQI.

After the tribe’s defeat in Qaim it was able to make a
comeback only to lose out once again. U.S. Special Forces eventually arrived in
western Anbar and organized the Desert Protectors. Most of the recruits for
this new unit came from the Hamza Brigade, and it was used in Operation Steel
Curtain. Together with the Americans, the two tribes were able to retake Qaim. The
U.S. then used the Protectors to recruit Sunnis into the army and police. That
cooperation fell apart when the Coalition told the new members of the security
forces that they would serve throughout Iraq. The tribesmen only wanted to do
their tours in their areas of Anbar. This disagreement eventually led the Albu
Mahal and Albu Nimr to stop working with the U.S. Again the Americans misread
the situation, and failed to effectively use their Iraqi allies. Without the
help of the Americans there was no hope that the tribes could take on the Islamists
themselves. They had already been defeated, and now they were once again. This
was the same fate of several other tribes in Anbar that tried to rise up
against AQI in 2005. It wouldn’t be until 2006 and the Anbar Awakening that
Iraqis in the province were able to muster enough forces to take on the
militants.

After the Awakening and the turning around of Anbar, Sheikh
Aziz was still not happy with the state of affairs within his country. First,
he did not like the Iraqi government. He believed it was full of people who
were either not from Iraq or were not loyal to it. He was mostly talking about
the Shiite parties that took power that he claimed followed Iran. Not only
that, but because they were installed after the U.S. invasion he did not consider
them the legitimate rulers. At the same time, he wanted the Americans to stay
in the country long term to deter Iran and keep the Kurds in line as well. Aziz
was no less forgiving when it came to Iraqi democracy. He said that it would
take ten to twenty years for the public to understand it, and until then the
politicians would manipulate the situation to stay in office. Instead, he
advocated for the Sunnis to resume their natural role in Iraq, and rule the
country in some type of autocracy. Many others in Anbar felt the exact same way
as Aziz. They thought of the Shiite as either Iranians or controlled by them. Likewise,
the Kurds were not Arabs and therefore not really Iraqi. Finally, democracy was
a foreign idea brought by outsiders, which had empowered the Shiite and Kurdish
majority to rule over Sunnis. The end of the civil war in 2008 did not change
those opinions, but rather transferred them from the battlefield to politics.
Many Sunnis feel that attempt failed, and they are taking up the gun once again,
because their new sectarian identity does not allow them to accept the current
situation in the country.

The Albu Mahal tribe went from insurgents to counter
insurgents, but remained opponents of the new Iraq. Sheikh Aziz and his tribe
saw the U.S. invasion as ushering in not only a foreign occupation, but also empowering
Shiites and Kurds, which he never saw as real Iraqis. That was what led the
Albu Mahal to initially join the militants and work with Al Qaeda. AQI turned
out to be a bigger threat, and the tribe was one of the first to try to fight
the Islamists. Despite two tries, it didn’t have the numbers or support to take
on the group. It would not be until the Anbar Awakening in 2006 for the Albu
Mahal to have any success. Afterward Iraqi politics became the main area of
competition, and Aziz was not happy with that either. In the current fighting
in Anbar the Albu Mahal have not been mentioned. That’s probably because it is
off by the Syrian border rather than in the center of the province where the combat
is going on. Still it would not be surprising if Sheikh Aziz and his men rejoin
the insurgency given its views of the country.

Iraq History Timeline

About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com